WIld Wing Ideas

Earlier in the week I noticed a giant ad on ESPN.com’s homepage for the restaurant. Buffalo Wild Wings. It a bar/ restaurants that serves “dude food”. Wings, burgers, fries, and all he good stuff that you eat when drink beer and watch sports. The ad was concerning the current NCAA basketball tournament and all the upsets that have led to the total destruction of everyones bracket across the globe. At the top it had a beer next to a bracket sheet with the words : ” Put your ruined bracket to use.”, or something to that affect. And then the hands come into the picture and fold the bracket paper into a coaster. ALong the sides of the ad were more things that you could to. So pretty much the Buffalo Wild Wings company turn the terrable tournament brackets into a way to appeal to all the sports fans that got it wrong by saying, ” dont worry. we understand. ” So it looks like they are hoping people will see that they care and will then want to go eat or grab a beer at their restaurant. a decent attempt I must say but I think coiuld have maybe done a little better.

EAS: strictly business

So my last blog was about the sexual advertisement that have been airing for Muscle Milk. This time I’m going to switch my attention to a similar product by the name of EAS Myoplex. It is a similar to muscle milk in the way that it is a post workout beverage. However. the two companies have taken two completely different paths to selling their products. Muscle milk took the sexual road, aka the easy way out but EAS chose the a different path. The athletic path. Their advertisements show athletes working out in slow motion. People running, lifting weights , swimming etc. while you are watching the athletes there a person reading sort of a poem that is a ode to muscles. A sort of ” where would we be without our muscles” poem. In other words they are selling to people who are serious about training and serious about being in shape. It was almost like a slap in the face to muscle milk. It made them look like little kids and in my opinion a great move by EAS to kill the competition.

Friends with benefits? Word?

Just when I thought I had seen all the sexual related advertisements there came another. But this was not on a billboard or on a bus or in a magazine. It was online. On ESPN.com of all places. The advertiser was “Muscle Milk”. An understandable advertiser for a site like ESPN. But it was what it said that had me double taking. Right under the ESPN logo on the site the ad read: “Go from friends, to Friends with benefits” . Or in other words, drink this after your workout and go see if your sexy lady friend wants to have sex. Ill give them credit, it is straight to the point. The second one that was down the right side of the page said, “go from checking out, to being checked out.” Not nearly as sexual as the first but still pretty good. Im looking forward to the day when I look up at a billboard and see a couple having wild sex with the Nike or Coke logo plasterd across it with the slogan, ” use this and get laid every single day”. Why be creative? Say what you mean. Either way I love running into these little sex ad gems every now and then and I really look forward to watching them evolve into a whole other monster.

To all my old folks

This post is kind of late but I’m going to go ahead and post it anyway. The other day I noticed a billboard on the back of a bus that was advertising for Santa Monica College. At first glance it just appeared to be a normal college ad. But as I sat there behind that bus I noticed that there were only old people on the advertisement. There wasn’t one young “college looking” person pictured and the writing said something like, “SMC, a great place to continue your education” or journey or something like that. It was interesting to see that even though enrollment is up and classes are full the college is still trying to get elders to attend. Perhaps there is a chance that the college does actually want to get older people who are retired to attend so that they have something to do during day. How considerate of them. But I think the real purpose behind the ad was to encourage older people who had to for some reason stop their education to come and continue their pursuit of a degree at SMC. Either way it was surprising to see a college billboard directed at old people. Looks like you students are going to have to watch out for all the rowdy old folks who will be terrorizing a campus near you.

If it aint broke it aint me

Earlier this week while in the car I was listening to N.W.A’s album Straight Outta Compton. Released in 1988, it was the first gangster rap album and was met with mixed reviews but mostly controversy. Tracks like “Fuck the Police” and “Straight Outta Compton” Introduced a new style of rap to the world that some people were not ready for. However when we look back at it now we realize how crucial that album and that group were to music and hip-hop in general. Together, the group was able to use the media to truly express themselves and shed some light on a lifestyle that was not talked about and unthinkable at the time to the mass public. As I sit and listen to it now I see that there was really no way the music could fail. They created a product so controversial that everyone wanted to hear it, and although everyone has a different opinion of the lyrics I think back in 88 society was really missing the big picture and instead of putting the “fire” out they instead fueled it by giving it media coverage banning them from some radio stations and of course a letter from the F.B.I http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/story/nwa-urged-to-stop-recording-by-fbi_1059747

But not only did they bring lyrics that no one had ever heard before but they also brought a musical aspect to the rap game that hadn’t been heard before. With the beats of Dr. Dre  N.W.A  was appealing to  musicians and song writers who went out and bought the album. So they had everyone in the music game , lawmakers and the government, and the mass public, black and white people alike listening and creating reviews. That meant that anyone who hadn’t heard them yet had a variety of reviews to go by and because all of the reviews were different they would have to go buy it and listen for themselves. So in the end they were a business success and a musical success simply by releasing their views and opinions through the media.